"I thought, if there was no future, how would we
behave?"
-P. D. James

While P.D. James is assuredly one of the greatest
of British mystery writers, this book places her in the exclusive
class of authors of great dystopian fictions as well. Though a
best-seller simply by virtue of having her name on the cover, the novel
seems to have largely disappointed fans looking for another detective
tale and by-passed those who don't read such. That's a tragedy because
not only is it the literary and intellectual equal of Aerodrome,
1984,
Brave New World, and Fahrenheit
451, but it is far more pertinent than any but Huxley's to the
crises we face today--or, more properly, that Europe faces today:
secularism; low fertility rates; anti-immigration hysteria; overbearing
government; euthanasia; etc.. The book is labeled science fiction by
many, but is more nearly contemporary satire.

The story begins:

Early this morning, 1 January 2021, three minutes after
midnight, the last human being to be born on earth was killed in a pub
brawl in a suburb of Buenos Aires, aged twenty-five years, two months
and twelve days.

It is told in the form of chapters that alternate between the diary
entries of "Theodore Faron, Doctor of Philosophy, Fellow of Merton
College in the University of Oxford, historian of the Victorian age,
divorced, childless, solitary, whose only claim to notice is that he is
cousin to Xan Lyppiatt, the dictator and Warden of England" and third
person narration that gives the author more leeway to describe
events.

Ms James builds slowly to the main action of the novel, leaving herself
plenty of time to toss out ideas. With no children to care for and no
future to care about, the people who remain, the Omegas, are completely
self-absorbed, pampering themselves physically and turning control of
political affairs over to a dictatorship that guarantees their safety.

Luke said gently: "Protection, comfort, pleasure. There has
to be something more."

"It's what people care about, what they want. What more should the
Council be offering?"

"Compassion, justice, love."

"No state has ever concerned itself with love, and no state ever can."

Julian said: "But it can concern itself with justice."

Rolf was impatient: "Justice, compassion, love. They're all words. What
we';re talking about is power. The Warden is a dictator masquerading as
a democratic leader. He ought to be made to be responsible to the will
of the people."

Theo said: "Ah, the will of the people. That's a fine sounding phrase.
At present, the will of the people seems to be for protection, comfort,
pleasure."

Well, guarantees it until they're old enough anyway, then they're
required to participate in a form of mass suicide called the Quietus.
Meanwhile, religion has been totally debased:

During the mid-1990s the recognized churches, particularly
the Church of England, moved from the theology of sin and redemption to
a less uncompromising doctrine: corporate social responsibility coupled
with a sentimental humanism. [...] Even to unbelievers like myself, the
cross, stigma of the barbarism of officialdom and man's ineluctable
cruelty, has never been a comfortable symbol.

Criminality, or any deviation from social norms, is punished by being
sent to the Isle of Man, which serves as a hyper-darwinian, unsupervised
penal colony:

"People have had enough of criminals and criminality. They
aren't prepared today to live their lives in fear. [...] You must
remember the 1990s, women afraid to walk the streets of their own
cities, the rise in sexual and violent crime, old people self-imprisoned
in their flats--some burned to death behind their bars--drunken
hooligans ruining the peace of country towns, children as dangerous as
their elders, no property safe if it wasn't protected with expensive
burglar alarms and grilles. Everything has been tried to cure man's
criminality, every type of so-called treatment, every regime in our
prisons. Cruelty and severity didn't work, but neither did kindness and
leniency. Now, since Omega, the people have said to us: "Enough is
enough." The priests, the psychiatrists, the psychologists, the
criminologists--none has found the answer. What we guarantee is freedom
from fear, freedom from want, freedom from boredom."

And, of course, immigration is tightly restricted -- the fear of those who are different combining with worry that newcomers might eventually outnumber the natives. What really stands out about that litany of social pathologies is how applicable it already is to Europe. The anti-human future that Ms James imagined just a few years ago is rapidly coming to dreadful fruition.

As bleak as this vision is, when Ms James turns to the action of the novel she holds out a flicker of hope. Faron has been largely complacent, like most of his countrymen, but is snapped out of his torpor after witnessing a Quietus and realizing that what people have been told is a voluntary and peaceful ceremony is something quite different. He falls in with a small band of folk who refuse to accept the way things are. They issue a challenge to the nation:

TO THE PEOPLE OF BRITAIN
We cannot shut our eyes any longer to the evils in our society. If our race is to die, let us at least die as free men and women, as human beings, not as devils. We make the following demands to the Warden of England.

1. Call a general election and put your policies before the people.
2. Give the Sojourners full civil rights including the right to live in their own homes, to send for their families and to remain in Britain at the end of their contract of service.
3. Abolish the Quietus.
4. Stop deporting convicted offenders to the Isle of Man Penal Colony and ensure that people there can live in peace and decency.
5. Stop the compulsory testing of semen and the examination of healthy young women and shut down the public porn shops.

THE FIVE FISHES

Eventually they are forced to hide out from the authorities and when one of their number dies the Burial for the Dead from the Book of Common Prayer is read over him and the source of the book's title is revealed:

Lord, thou hast been our refuge, from one generation to another.

Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever the earth and the world were made, thou art God from everlasting, and world without end.

For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday; seeing that is past as a watch in the night.

And the story ends with the promise that the children of men will come again.

It's a moving and thoughtful book that should be read as universally as its predecessors which really speak to a prior age more than ours. The director Alfonso Cuarón -- who made the last Harry Potter film -- is working on a movie version that's scheduled for release in 2007 and will hopefully revive interest in the book. Though written in 1992, it's the first great novel of the 21st Century.